Lytro’s new Snapdragon-powered “light field” camera coming in July

Lets you change a picture's focus and depth of field after it's been shot.

We last looked at Lytro's funny little tube camera a couple of years ago when we sat down with one of the devices during a crowded PR event at 2012's CES. The camera's light field capture technology uses a high-megapixel CMOS sensor to record a large amount of "extra" data points over a standard camera CMOS sensor. Rather than using the extra data to pump up the scene's resolution, the camera instead tries to capture a holistic representation of the rays of light it sees. This, coupled with some software magic, allows Lytro cameras to set or alter a picture's focus point after the picture has been taken.

Although Lytro's initial product was small and relatively low-resolution, this July the company will be releasing an updated and vastly improved model: the Lytro Illum. Engadget has posted a lengthy hands-on with the Illum, which sports a sleek exterior that begs to be touched:

The Illum is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801, and the SoC's processing power is used to drive a high-resolution sensor that captures about 3.6x the number of light rays that the Illum's predecessor could capture (40 "megarays," versus 11 for the first-generation Lytro). The Illum can not only change an image's focus point after capture, but it can also alter an image's depth of field, making the focus plane shallower or broader to change exactly how much of the image is in focus.

The downside is that rather than producing RAW images that can be processed by a standard photo app like Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture, the Lytro Illum's images must be offloaded and processed with Lytro's own proprietary application. However, according to Engadget, images can be exported from that application and into whatever photo application you wish to use for further post-processing.

Lytro expects to start selling the Illum in July for $1,599, though preorders will get $100 off that price. We'll have an Illum to play with as soon as the company has press units available, though it may still be a couple of months. Look for our review then—and if there's anything specific you want us to try out when we get it, make sure to mention it in the comments below.

Lee Hutchinson
Lee is the Senior Technology Editor at Ars and oversees gadget, automotive, IT, and culture content. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX. Emaillee.hutchinson@arstechnica.com//Twitter@Lee_Ars